Players regularly playing gaming machines quickly tire of particular games. It is therefore necessary for manufacturers of these machines to develop innovative game features which add interest to the games. In so doing, it is hoped to keep players amused and therefore willing to continue playing the game as well as to attract new players. Also, with the growth that has occurred in the gaming machine market, there is intense competition between manufacturers to supply various existing and new venues. When selecting a supplier of gaming machines, the operator of a venue will often pay close attention to the popularity of various games and their displays with the patrons of the venue. Therefore, gaming machine manufacturers are keen to devise games and/or gaming machine features which are popular with the players and which are also distinguishable from gaming machines of other manufacturers as a mechanism for improving sales, retaining customers and attracting new customers.
These days, particularly with spinning reel type games, the reels and the symbols carried on the reels used by the various manufacturers can be very similar to each other and it may be hard for a player or an operator of a venue to determine, at a glance, which manufacturer has manufactured a particular machine.
The invention will be described with reference to a spinning reel-type game and, more particularly, a video simulation of spinning reels. It will, however, be appreciated that the invention is equally applicable to other types of games played on gaming machines such as card games, bingo game, keno games, or the like.
In a video simulation of a spinning reel, a background of a symbol is opaque to give the appearance of a periphery of a reel. In a typical screen display, three reel positions are visible for each reel. Accordingly, symbols are arranged end-to-end to provide an appearance of an opaque periphery of a reel.
Technically, in the terminology of gaming machines, a symbol incorporates a background portion plus an indicium carried on the background portion. It is the background portion of the symbol that is opaque to provide the appearance of a part of the periphery of the reel.
However, for ease of explanation in this specification, the term “composite symbol” shall be used with a background portion of the composite symbol being referred to as a “carrier” and the indicium arranged on the background portion being referred to as a “symbol”.